This is Called Coopting a Threat

It appears that the Democratic party is trying to encourage Elizabeth Warren to run for Senate in Massachusetts:

Officials in the Democratic Party are wooing Elizabeth Warren to run for the Senate against the Massachusetts Republican Scott P. Brown rather than have her continue to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Ms. Warren has become a lightning rod for controversy over the new agency, which she conceived and is helping create. Consumer groups and some Democrats have demanded her appointment as its first director. A group of 44 Senate Republicans, with applause from the financial industry, has promised to block any nominee.

In seeking to enlist Ms. Warren for a different campaign, Democrats are taking aim at two birds. They can lay the groundwork for a potential compromise over a different candidate to lead the new agency and, they hope, they can increase their chances of reclaiming Mr. Brown’s seat by sending against him a woman who has won considerable acclaim and popularity among liberals for taking on the financial industry.

This is not about having a viable Senate candidate, though she would probably be a credible challenge to Scott Brown, but about removing here from any position of influence in financial regulation.

Warren is not the choice of either the Democratic Party or the Obama administration, are about as interested in her having real authority over the excesses of  Wall Street and the big banks as they are over investigating torture and abuse of power by Bush and His Evil Minions^™.

If she wins, she won't have any influence in the boys club that is the Senate, and my money would be on her not even getting a seat on the banking committee.

They want to give her a shiny hat to shut her up.